Slang, Then and Now

I have been thinking about slang. I already introduced you to my husband's favorite, 'fucked up like a can of worms'. There are a couple of other terms that have been swirling around my head that I thought I would share with you.

One is pretty juvenile. My neighbor has a cute saying he uses when he has to go to the bathroom. Instead of taking a dump, or going number two, he drops off a stink pickle. This is a grown up adult person, too, not a ten-year-old. I don't know where he came up with that one, and don't think I want to know.

The other two slang terms are from back in the good old days when I was in high school. I don't know why I have been thinking about them lately, but thought slang is a good subject for blogging.

Cake was a popular slang in my school. If something was easy, instead of saying it was a piece of cake, you would just say cake. If someone asked about a math test, or if you thought your team was going to win the big game, you would just say cake. If something was especially easy, if the math test was just five true or false questions, or the big game was against the Louisville Losers, you could say cupcake.

On the other hand, if everything turned out wrong, if the math test was a nightmare, or the big game was against the Danton Destroyers, there was another slang term to use. It came from an old Peanuts Halloween cartoon. When the kids were out trick-or-treating they would compare what they got from each house. Linus might get a chocolate bar, Lucy a popcorn ball, and so on. Every time it came to poor Charlie Brown he said the same thing, 'I got a rock." That became a very popular saying at my school. I don't know why high school students were watching a Peanuts cartoon, but I still transform my problems into rocks. Some are boulders, some are just pebbles.

There are some other slang terms I wanted to write about, but thought I would save them for last. It's a little x-rated, like 'fucked up like a can of worms' so if you are easily offended, STOP READING!

Anyway, my husband, and the stink pickle neighbor, have a saying for when everything goes wrong. Actually, there are two terms they use. It's either a cluster fuck, or a dick dance. Cluster fuck is when everything that could go wrong does go wrong. Everything starts to unravel and you just want to scream. A dick dance is not quite the same as a cluster fuck. Bureaucratic mazes full of red tape and forms filled out in triplicate are dick dances. Dick dances often lead to cluster fucks, and a lot of times it takes a dick dance to get out of a cluster fuck.